When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion • Hacker News Board

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#181

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:21 AM UTC

dgentile wrote: post #150

sfink wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're going to send kids to 7 or so hours of being pressured into paying attention to stuff they're generally not that interested in learning, then some amount of time doing mostly make-work activities, and you expect them to be interested in exploring learning opportunities in the minimal remaining bits of time? (And for older grades, they're also getting up well before their bodies want to.) Would you be able t…

High Schooler here. I've been teaching myself Vulkan and am writing a videogame, but I'm so exhausted on weekdays from my course-load that I only work on it on weekends and breaks. I wish I could put more time into it but trying to program after 6+ hours of school and then homework is a nightmare, and that code usually ends up being buggier than my normal output, with low productivity.

I spent years of my precious spare time making games from junior high through college. Lost out on some social development, and made too many fan projects based on other people's IP.

I'd recommend trying to keep life balanced. If it refreshes you then enjoy. Just don't burn out on it or get stuck in perfectionism. Find that happy zone where you can feel productive or entertained or have something to share.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#182

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:25 AM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #133

eloff wrote: post #87

My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let…

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

[deleted]

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#183

Post by petertodd » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

abnry wrote: post #139

mgh2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

There is a lot of bias towards homeschoolers so the wild success stories often get touted to counteract the prejudice. I was homeschooled but agree that it isn't for everyone, mainly because not everyone has the resources. It decidedly requires a middle class lifestyle. Also, parents need to have something of their life together beyond just financial resources. But people overestimate the competence required of a par…

> Unschooling, however, I am not too sympathetic to. You need some structure.

For most kids you probably need some structure. For some, unschooling certainly works well; for others it's another term for "school dropout". I personally was both homeschooled and unschooled, for different topics, and a high % of the smartest people I know were unschooled.

I really struggled to learn to read and write, even by grade five. So my parents took me out and my mom worked with me one-on-one intensively to learn phonics, which finally fixed that problem. Meanwhile, prior to that the biggest challenge I had in learning programming on my own is that I struggled to actually read the books I had on it. I think that unschooling taught me how to learn on my own, in a way that was very beneficial later in life.

Yet again, I'd say based on my experience taking relatively high-level, proof-based, math classes in university many years later, that for me the structured experience of university math worked much better than trying to learn those subjects on my own (which I had also tried!). Yet, for high school math, there hadn't been much difference (I did attend highschool).

Learning isn't one-size-fits-all.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#184

Post by davidgay » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

eloff wrote: post #135

BugWatch wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind revealing your brother's nom de plume (assuming he writes under one)?

I can't reveal that here because it's easy to identify me from my HN posts and thus tie his pen name to his real identity.

If it's who the 'obvious' google search reveals, you've said too much already (and at least one the links that search gives reveals the family name directly).

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#185

Post by phobosanomaly » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #134

eloff wrote: post #87

My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let…

> it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid This has been touched upon elsewhere by other commenters. But to at least ask you personally, would you concede that if you were doing well on tests despite the absence of the kind of cramming / teaching-to-the-test that the average schooled student receives, you could have done any kind of education, and in many ways, there…

We have to get 300 million people to kind of internalize (or at least be vaguely familiar with) a small number of algorithms (constructing/reading a written sentence, long division, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell).

That's the point of the broader education system, and that's all that really matters.

Kids who are curious will follow some weird path and do all kinds of cool shit, kids with money will follow some orchestrated path that makes their parents happy, and most kids will do some variant of a contrived path at a community college and/or state school.

So, who cares? None of it matters. It's 2020. There's no card catalog. There's no ENIAC in the basement that some dweeb wearing a pocket-protector gatekeeps. Feynman doesn't have to sign off on your lab time. HOPE is on DVD, K&R is free on PDF, some crazy guys in the bay are selling DIY CRISPR kits, 3D printers are $200, FPV drone racing is affordable, and Steam sales are so cheap it makes my head spin (they remade both RE1 and Half Life!!!). They sell 2600 at Barnes and Noble for god's sake.

You can buy Knuth on Amazon, Erickson is available on NoStarch, and Xorpd's Udemy course is like $20 bucks. If you're a curious person, that will keep you pretty busy until you build Ben Eater's 8-bit computer, and work your way through building Dave Gingery's entire machine shop, and finish the Coursera Bioinformatics specialization. Then you can discover trad climbing and spend a sabbatical at Yosemite Camp 4 planning how you're gonna free The Nose on El Cap. That will give you plenty of time to ponder your first FreeBSD device driver, which will give you technical skills to construct your first botnet that you sell to the FSB for enough to film your first music video at your crib in Quetzaltenango. If you're smart and curious, you're busy no matter what bullshit job you have to do or what bullshit tests you have to take.

Tests, no tests, who cares? The hackers hack, the lanyard guys swipe in at FAANG, the boring people stress about their tests, and the weirdos make a living playing online poker from a palapa in Thailand.

The world turns.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#186

Post by petertodd » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:31 AM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #23

t0mbstone wrote: post #7

I was homeschooled until the age of around 10, and then my family adopted a new approach called "lifestyle of learning", which is just another way of saying "unschooling". Basically, I was allowed to skip schoolwork, as long as I was doing something productive. I hated schoolwork, so I started spending all my spare time tinkering with stuff on the computer. I wasn't allowed to play video games (since they aren't prod…

I can see homeschooling being potentially more interesting/engaging for a certain kind of student after the basics are out of the way, but this: > He didn't even learn how to read until he was around 10. to me, is fucking terrifying . All of the people I know who did better on their own than in a classroom were able to do so because they could gobble up half a library in a weekend. I think you need to be able to read…

>> He didn't even learn how to read until he was around 10.

> to me, is fucking terrifying.

I could barely read at age 10, and I was in public school! That's why my parents took me out and homeschooled me. Which fixed the problem in a few months with intensive one-on-one phonics from my mom that the school system just wasn't going to do.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#187

Post by petertodd » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

vivekd wrote: post #141

mgh2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

That sounds good in theory but research seems to suggest that homeschoolers overwhelmingly perform better on every single metric. Although I'll grant that there may be data bias in that smarter and more devoted parents are more likely to homeschool. https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/#:~:te... .

> That sounds good in theory but research seems to suggest that homeschoolers overwhelmingly perform better on every single metric.

Being homeschooled and unschooled myself, I got to see that first hand in other families. But I don't think it actually means that homeschooling/unschooling is universally better: plenty of people try it, find it doesn't work for them, and quit.

My best guess is it increases the variance of results more than the average, with some kids doing very well on it, and some very poorly. While that's good for society, it doesn't mean one can entirely replace the other.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#188

Post by grecy » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

chrisBob wrote: post #28

I am sure unschooling works out well for some people. I appreciate giving students some flexibility, but I think there really is a standard core that most people should learn. I went to a good engineering school for college, but they also require everyone to take 3 years of history, 3 years of english, 2 semesters of a foreign language, a psychology course, ... If it was left up to me I would not have taken most of t…

> I went to a good engineering school for college, but they also require everyone to take 3 years of history, 3 years of english, 2 semesters of a foreign language, a psychology course, ...

I've always found that a fascinating difference between University in the USA and Australia.

In Australia I studied Software Engineering (Accredited by the Australian Institute of Engineers). From day one, every single course was strictly "on topic". Maths, Electronics, Programming, Computer theory, compilers, real time programming, Java, C++, Real Time Programming, Digital Electric Design, Data Comms, more Maths, Digital Signal and Image processing, Game Design, Personal Software Process, etc. etc.

In the four years I studied (plus another for a placement in the workforce) I never studied a single moment that wasn't directly Software Engineering. Not a single English or history or anything course.

My knowledge is very deep, but not nearly as broad as someone that took all those other courses.

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#189

Post by a-nikolaev » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:44 AM UTC

dgentile wrote: post #150

sfink wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're going to send kids to 7 or so hours of being pressured into paying attention to stuff they're generally not that interested in learning, then some amount of time doing mostly make-work activities, and you expect them to be interested in exploring learning opportunities in the minimal remaining bits of time? (And for older grades, they're also getting up well before their bodies want to.) Would you be able t…

High Schooler here. I've been teaching myself Vulkan and am writing a videogame, but I'm so exhausted on weekdays from my course-load that I only work on it on weekends and breaks. I wish I could put more time into it but trying to program after 6+ hours of school and then homework is a nightmare, and that code usually ends up being buggier than my normal output, with low productivity.

This is great, but I think, learning Vulkan and writing a video game can be hard within the same project. Don't burn out.

If you want a suggestion, I'd keep learning Vulkan on a side, but chose a higher-level graphics library for actually programming a game. Just to keep yourself interested and to see progress quicker. There are so many decisions and design choices in making a good game, so keeping graphics simple and small can give you more creative freedom. (If that's your final goal.)

Re: When You Get into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion

#190

Post by freshhawk » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 4:49 AM UTC

mgh2 wrote: post #133

eloff wrote: post #87

My brother and I were homeschooled, but it was quite structured and we wrote the same provincial exams as every other grade 12 kid. My brother did the SAT as well. We had excellent scores. We both dropped out of college with near perfect GPAs. Today I'm a successful self-taught software engineer now starting a SaaS business. My brother is a famous sci fi author. He makes even more than I do. I think homeschooling let…

This might work for outliers/higher IQ/elite people in the HN community, but consider this: 1. School is probably the best public invention to systematically distribute knowledge to the masses. Some like to point out "dropouts", "self-taught" geniuses or the "lucky few" as models instead of exceptions to the rule. 2. Not everyone is self-motivated to learn. Children, at critical developmental ages, are more prone to…

> School's purpose is not to teach obedience or even getting a job. It is there to teach us critical thinking, and consequently, how to be a good citizen.

That's an interesting use of "purpose". That isn't what our system was specifically designed for (Prussian system adopted by the US) by the people who designed it.

They wrote heavily about how well their new education system instilled obedience and created good soldiers and workers. They were very proud of these good outcomes.

It's also not the actual measured outcomes of our current system. Hell, "critical thinking" is explicitly excluded from the curriculum by a chunk of the US.

The use of "purpose" to mean "thing we want it to be" isn't a critical type of thinking.